He took hold of her left hand, and looked at it, then said playfully: 

’Of course you wonder.  What business has a wife to come and see her husband without the ring on her finger?’

Nancy turned from him, opened the front of her dress, unknotted a string of silk, and showed her finger bright with the golden circlet.

’That’s how I must wear it, except when I am with you.  I keep touching—­to make sure it’s there.’

Tarrant kissed her fingers.

’Dear,’—­she had her face against him—­’make me certain that you love me.  Speak to me like you did before.  Oh, I never knew in my life what it was to feel ashamed!’

‘Ashamed?  Because you are married, Nancy?’

’Am I really married?  That seems impossible.  It’s like having dreamt that I was married to you.  I can hardly remember a thing that happened.’

‘The registry at Teignmouth remembers,’ he answered with a laugh.  ‘Those books have a long memory.’

She raised her eyes.

’But wouldn’t you undo it if you could?—­No, no, I don’t mean that.  Only that if it had never happened—­if we had said good-bye before those last days—­wouldn’t you have been glad now?’

‘Why, that’s a difficult question to answer,’ he returned gently.  ‘It all depends on your own feeling.’

For whatever reason, these words so overcame Nancy that she burst into tears.  Tarrant, at once more lover-like, soothed and fondled her, and drew her to sit on his knee.

’You’re not like your old self, dear girl.  Of course, I can understand it.  And your father’s illness.  But you mustn’t think of it in this way.  I do love you, Nancy.  I couldn’t unsay a word I said to you—­I don’t wish anything undone.’

’Make me believe that.  I think I should be quite happy then.  It’s the hateful thought that perhaps you never wanted me for your wife; it will come, again and again, and it makes me feel as if I would rather have died.’

’Send such thoughts packing.  Tell them your husband wants all your heart and mind for himself.’

‘But will you never think ill of me?’

She whispered the words, close-clinging.

‘I should be a contemptible sort of brute.’

’No.  I ought to have—.  If we had spoken of our love to each other, and waited.’

’A very proper twelvemonth’s engagement,—­meetings at five o’clock tea,—­fifty thousand love-letters,—­and all that kind of thing.  Oh, we chose a better way.  Our wedding was among the leaves and flowers.  You remember the glow of evening sunlight between the red pine and the silver birch?  I hope that place may remain as it is all our lives; we will go there—­’

’Never!  Never ask me to go there.  I want to forget—­I hope some day I may forget.’

‘If you hope so, then I will hope the same.’

’And you love me—­with real, husband’s love—­love that will last?’